


silently resigned

by Cinnamonbookworm



Series: the revelation series [1]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Angst, Damien Darhk is Felicity's father, F/M, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Lunch Dates, Season 4 Spoilers, Surveilance, Unresolved Ending, felicity finds out about the proposal in the worst possible way, morally grey felicity smoak, season 4 speculation, there was supposed to be more but my mojo failed this city so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-01
Updated: 2015-10-01
Packaged: 2018-04-24 06:14:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4908442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinnamonbookworm/pseuds/Cinnamonbookworm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Normally, Laurel would leave her be: Felicity gets like this sometimes, when she’s close to a breakthrough. She supposes it’s a side effect of the geniousness, but this time something’s different. Because the walls of her office are glass and <i>Laurel’s not blind</i> and Felicity is not sitting at her desk with high, tense shoulders and a pen in her mouth and that little worried crease between her eyebrows. No, the young CEO is slumped over in almost defeat, left hand in her short blonde hair, pulling the slight curls away from her face. And shielding it. That’s the most important thing. Because Felicity is right handed, so the only reason she’d be hiding her face like this would be if she’s crying and doesn’t want anyone to see.</p><p>“Let me in.” she tells Felicity’s assistant. She doesn’t take no for an answer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	silently resigned

**Author's Note:**

> I really _really_ wanted to explore the idea of this happening, since spoilers seem to indicate that something along these lines might happen. Instead of doing the actual Damien Darhk and Felicity thing, however, I wanted to explore the aftermath, and I felt Laurel would be a great vessel to channel this. Especially since Felicity is distancing herself from Team Arrow and I wanted her to be distant from the reader as well.  
>  Thanks for reading.  
> Also: title for this song comes from the song "Satisfied" from Hamilton the musical, which is currently taking over my life.

Laurel is a worrier.

She worries about Sara, her father, Oliver. She worries about her clients, her job, her team. She worries about herself, whether anyone can tell how close she is to falling apart on her bad days, whether or not she’s really as fine as she keeps telling herself she is-

Bottom line is she worries. A lot.

Today, however, her worrying has taken up a specific target. And that target is Felicity Smoak.

She’s been a little… off kilter since her encounter with Damien Darhk. Laurel can’t blame her; it’s pretty tough to find out that the actual incarnate of evil is your blood relative. Even harder when he only reveals himself to you because he thinks you share his tendencies. He’d showed her something. Or done something to her. Laurel can just tell by the way Felicity has closed herself off from the rest of the team. And she’s determined to find out what it is.

Because she knows personally how suffocating it can be to hold things like that inside of you. And Felicity is so obviously drowning. Quickly.

They’re in the barely renovated HQ down below Palmer Tech, the space that had once been Felicity’s pet project, but how seems slightly abandoned, supported only by the occasional touch from Thea or herself.

They’re down there together this time because Laurel had come to Palmer Tech for lunch and instead got a warning that Ms. Smoak “really doesn’t want any visitors right now.” Along with a brief warning from a young Mr. Holt about how the CEO had been locked in her office all day, not even taking calls.

Normally, Laurel would leave her be; Felicity gets like this sometimes, when she’s close to a breakthrough. She supposes it’s a side effect of the geniusness, but this time something’s different. Because the walls of her office are glass and _Laurel’s not blind_ and Felicity is not sitting at her desk with high, tense shoulders and a pen in her mouth and that little worried crease between her eyebrows. No, the young CEO is slumped over in almost defeat, left hand in her short blonde hair, pulling the slight curls away from her face. And shielding it. That’s the most important thing. Because Felicity is right handed, so the only reason she’d be hiding her face like this would be if she’s crying and doesn’t want anyone to see.

“Let me in.” she tells Felicity’s assistant. She doesn’t take no for an answer.

Curtis and Jerry leave her be and she opens the door.

Immediately, Felicity jumps back from her mournful pose. She gives her a polite smile, but her face is red and blotchy from crying, and she lets out a small sniff before beginning as if everything’s alright. “Oh! Laurel! Sorry, I - must’ve forgotten about this. We’re doing lunch, right?”

“Felicity -”

“No, no. This is all my fault. I’m sorry, I’ve just been kind of distracted by-”

“Work?” Laurel guesses, glancing at the screen Felicity had inadvertently gestured to, where something definitely not proton-adaptor-related is playing on a loop.

Felicity’s eyes drift to the screen again, before quickly, forcefully, shooting back to Laurel. “It’s nothing, Laurel, I swear. I can’t talk about it. Not now. Not-” she motions to the glass walls, “-here.”

“Felicity, if something’s bothering you, you can talk to me. _You know that, right?”_

Her friend pauses for a second, sniffling again and looking absolutely anywhere other than Laurel’s eyes and the still-playing video feed.

Finally, Felicity looks up, plastic smile returned and simply says, “Would you mind helping me bring these files down to HQ?”

It’s just an excuse, and Laurel knows it, but she lifts up the box anyway and walks with her friend to the elevator. As they begin to descend to the sublevel where HQ is located, she shifts the heavy box in her hands and watches as Felicity nervously rubs her thumb and forefinger together.

The gesture was always a sign of distress for Oliver, but Felicity seems to have adapted it as well in the time since they got together. It’s a bad sign, though, a sign that something has gotten her wound to the point of extremity. Something is keeping Felicity up at night. Something worrisome. And Laurel’s fairly sure she’s about to find out what it is.  
Felicity swipes her keycard and the sensor at the door scans them in, recognizing their names and “official” titles in an automated voice (the door with the more unofficial titles comes later). And, once they’re in the comfort of concrete walls and an ARGUS security system, Felicity leads Laurel over to… another computer?  
She sets the box down on the conference table and finds Felicity pulling up her e-mail. On the screen, amidst thousands of messages involving board meeting and charity galas and microprocessors, lies one read e-mail with no subject line from a Mr. Damien Darhk.

Laurel immediately blanches.

Just the sight of his name is enough to bring back the memory of Felicity showing up at their makeshift Arrow Cave, covered in splatters of blood that were not her own, carrying a haunted sort of blankness in her eyes. Laurel wants to kill him. For whatever that sick bastard did to Felicity. Laurel wants to throw a knife into his brain and beat him senseless with her bo staff because Felicity Smoak should never _ever_ have to look like that again.

The only thing she’d told them about what happened to her that night was the shockingly simple revelation that the monster who was slowly strangling Star City just happened to be her father. And Laurel had thought _she’d_ had father problems. Now, it looks like she’s about to get the rest of the story.

Felicity takes a deep breath. “When he… took me, I was so sure he was going to torture me. Or kill me. You know, leave me strung up outside the house like some warning sign or something because that’s what people like him do: they take and they take and they get some sort of sick pleasure from hurting other people.”

The babbling is not unusual, but the way Felicity is saying it is. Usually she rushes through these like a runaway train, unable to stop going. This time, however, this time her words are quiet and cold and spaced out, and Laurel cringes at that fact because it means Felicity is literally incapable of rushing through the memories she’s talking about; she’s reliving that whole terrible experience just to share a story.

“But no, he didn’t do that. He just took my phone and my tablet and sat me down in this big black towncar that only had one door, which he was guarding, by the way, and told me this _terrible_ , sick version of _How I Met Your Mother_ and then he said… well, he made a lot of incorrect assumptions about my life and the people in it, and then he showed me this _video_ …” she shudders at the memory and Laurel finds herself reaching out a hand to squeeze Felicity’s shoulder. “And last week I got this e-mail and it had the video in it. I traced the IP address to this totally cleared laptop that he left… he left it at my old apartment. I felt safe there for so long and I know I don’t even _live_ there anymore, but I just felt so-”

“Violated?” Laurel guesses, and she hates that she’s right because this twisted monster has gotten himself inside Felicity’s head. Laurel can’t protect here there. As much as she wishes she could.

She nods and turns away from her, clicking the video file.

It’s a series of alternating shots, similar to that of security footage, but Laurel _knows_ there weren’t security cameras there. She knows because she was there. They were being watched, oh god, _they were being watched_. Even miles away from Star City, they were never without threat. She feels sick. And she’s only seen the first few seconds.

It gets worse, because then the camera zooms in and Oliver has a ring and all she gets to do is watch in horror as every single moment of that night is played out.

When the video ends, Laurel looks up at her friend, eyes wide in shock.

“He was going to propose.” Felicity murmurs, and if any one thing was the definition of devastation, Laurel’s pretty sure those words would be it.

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t know-”

“I didn’t either.”

“You mean he hasn’t-?”

“I think I’d know if he was…” she glances at the picture of them she’d put on her desk weeks ago. Okay, that’s it; Laurel is going to absolutely _kick Oliver’s ass_ tonight because if them coming back to Star City has made him suddenly decide he no longer _wants_ her… It’s true, it’s a little fast, but Laurel would drive them to Vegas right now for a shotgun wedding if it would make Felicity happy again. “He told me it was for the best. Said the reason he hasn’t asked me yet is because he can’t love me like this. He can’t love me when there’s this constant reminder that I am capable of the dark things he’s trying so hard to get past. He told me not to do to him what he did to my mother. No one wants to be married to a monster.”

“Felicity-” Laurel starts, “you’re _not_ a monster.”

“But I am. It literally runs in my blood - my mind. Just last year I was willing to let thousands of people die to save Oliver. I’m not a hero. Not even close. Not like all of you.”

“Felicity-”

“Don’t. Just don’t. I know what I am. Nothing you can say will change that.” She wipes away a stray tear. “Lunch, right?”

She obviously doesn’t want to talk about this right now, so Laurel doesn’t press her. “Yeah. How does Kelly’s sound?”

 


End file.
